John Fish, P’13, chairman and CEO of Suffolk Construction Inc., was named Chair of the University’s Board of Trustees, the first non-alumnus to hold the position. He succeeds Kathleen McGillycuddy NC’71. In addition, the Board appointed four new members: Paul Coulson, David Griffith ’68, P’00, ’02, ’06, Kathleen Flatley Ix ’88, M.Ed.’92, and Robert Keane, SJ, ’71, M.Div.’78. James P. Burns, IVD, was named dean of the Woods College of Advancing Studies. Burns had been interim dean since 2012. Erika Sabbath, newly-arrived assistant professor in the Graduate School of Social Work, received a $324,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to study the economic and health consequences
of job-related stress among hospital employees. @BCPoliceDept must have been reading Digest’s mind when it tweeted: “Ever wonder what a @BostonDuckTours looks like being pulled by a team of police officers?” The accompanying photo showed 10 members of the University’s force hauling a pea green, 32,000-pound amphibious craft across the Edmond’s Hall parking lot via a thick hawser. Their time for the 25-foot pull: 6.53 seconds. BCPD finished fourth out of 12 teams and raised $1,600 for Special Olympics Massachusetts. A five-year, $19 million, National Institutes of Health program to increase diversity in the ranks of biomedical researchers will be headquartered at Boston College and led by biology professor David Burgess. With 29 new and recent graduates joining Teach For America in 2014, Boston College ranked fifth among medium-size colleges and universities contributing alumni to the nonprofit that places recent graduates in high-need school districts. To promote its Espresso Your Faith Week, The Church in the 21st Century Center released a video titled “Shake It Off,” in which more than 1,000 Boston College students, faculty, and staff shook (and kicked and twirled) away their woes to the eponymous tune by Taylor Swift. The video, by John Walsh ’17 and John Campbell ’15, has been seen 150,000 times. Ms. Swift tweeted her thanks. Lynch School of Education associate professor Patrick Proctor will head a team that received a $1.47 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop a curriculum for fourth grade, Spanish-speaking English learners. The Pops on the Heights Barbara and Jim Cleary Scholarship Gala, held during Parents’ Weekend raised a record $5.2 million. The German studies department held a two-day reunion mit symposium to celebrate having more than 100 undergraduates selected as Fulbright scholars (the number currently stands at 108) since the program’s founding. Department chair Michael Resler said it’s “highly likely that Boston College has sent more Fulbright scholars to Germany and Austria over the years than any other American university.” A final edition of The Dean’s List, a yearly compendium of book recommendations from Fr. William B. Neenan, SJ, was released posthumously. Newcomers included Lawrence in Arabia by Scott Anderson; One Summer—America, 1927 by Bill Bryson; Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow; and Someone by Alice McDermott. Associate professor of fine arts Sheila Gallagher was one of 102 U.S. artists chosen for State of the Art: Discovering American Art Now, an exhibition at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. In a posting on hercampus.com, Victoria Moriarity ’17 imagined the celebrities suggested by the Height’s iconic buildings, including Beyoncé as the personification of Gasson Hall—”tall and strong . . . with an air of superiority, but never arrogance.” Four faculty members in the department of psychology were awarded grants to pursue investigations in the field: Assistant pro-fessor Alexa Veenema received a National Institutes of Health grant to study neural pathways affecting social play behavior; Assistant professor Liane Young, her post-doctoral associates Larisa Heiphetz and Brendan Gaesser, and professor Elizabeth Kensinger were awarded two grants from the John Templeton Foundation to investigate aspects of moral psychology including the development of religious cognition; and associate professor Scott Slotnick received funding from the Dana Foundation for research on how different portions of the brain interact during spatial memory formation. A recently unearthed 1911 college ranking system devised by the U.S. Bureau of Education judged schools according to how well they prepared students for graduate school and placed Boston College in the upper section of “Class Two”: institutions whose graduates might, like those from Class One schools, achieve a master’s degree in one of the strong graduate programs after accomplishing “the regular minimum amount of work.” The findings drew such an outcry from school presidents who felt mistreated that President William Howard Taft embargoed the report, and his successor, Woodrow Wilson, followed suit. In the most recent assessment, the 2015 U.S. News & World Report survey, the University retained its 31st position among national universities, and the Carroll School of Management edged up one spot, to number 21, among “The Best in Undergraduate Business.” Members of the University’s grounds crew planted 17,300 tulips, including mixtures such as “Above the Cloud,” “Glow Motion,” “Les Colettes,” “Mixed Company,” and “Sultans of Spring.”

—Thomas Cooper

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